Essex and the (not so) Single Girl

Well, the move went well, and now I’m adjusting to the cohabiting thing all over again. I guess I can’t call the column ‘Essex and the Single Girl’ anymore, because this is the first part of Inspired that he turns to, just because he wants to see if I’ve written about him.

I’ve not lived with many people – I guess you could say I’m quite picky about who I like to share a bathroom with on a permanent basis, and preferably I like it to be someone who cleans it occasionally.

Bathroom Blues

One ex of mine, after a spectacular argument that escalated from a lack of help in the bathroom cleaning department, decided to take on the criticisms I’d levelled at him through gritted teeth about Bathroom Fairies not actually being responsible for keeping the place clean, and being fed up with having to always clean the tidemark from around the bath, and he mounted an attack on the bath with Toilet Duck bathroom foam.

All well and good, I thought, until I went up there later and noticed the tidemark very much still in evidence. His mess, I hasten to add. Confronted about the lack of a shiny, sparkly bath, I asked him whether he’d *actually* done anything. He told me that he’d sprayed the foam on the bath and left it. “Didn’t you wipe it off, then?” I asked.

“It says on the tin that you don’t have to scrub it,” he replied, all innocence. Cue an exasperated woman, once again cleaning the bath, muttering about believing that Mars Bars actually help you work, rest and play next.

Clean freak?

I suppose I am a bit of a clean freak, not an obsessive ‘don’t put that empty mug there’ type but I definitely know there’s a difference between girl-cleaning and boy-cleaning. Dirty floors and worktops bother me. Leaving dirty washing up lying around for ages makes me slightly nervous. I can’t stand it when the washing up water leaves a revolting mess after it’s drained and it’s just left to weld itself to the sink. The Man is slightly more relaxed in an ‘if I can’t see it, it’s not there’ kind of way. Ah well, it’s all about compromise.